I believe actions speak louder than words. I wanted to ensure that my children would always be drawn to Israel and not the Arabic world, and that they would always know where my loyalty lay.
8.
TERRORISTS AMONG US
Muslims in the Arab world have a saying: “First comes Saturday, then comes Sunday.” Every Muslim in the Middle East knows exactly what this means. This is their way of saying that first they’ll get the Jews (who observe Sabbath on Saturday), and then they’ll get the Christians (whose Sabbath is Sunday). In the modern Middle East, the Muslims reversed this—they got the Christians first. Lebanon used to be the only country in the Middle East with a Christian majority. It’s not a coincidence that Lebanon was also the only democracy in the Arab world. Now Lebanon is dominated by Muslims, and the Christians who remain are a disrespected and irrelevant minority. They are oppressed and exploited by Syria and terrorized by Hezbollah. Through Hezbollah, Iran has sunk its radical Islamic fangs into Lebanon. Even if the Assad family dictatorship falls, the Syrians and their Iranian patron-paymasters will never leave voluntarily. Syria cannot leave, because most of the Syrian economy is based on plunder from Lebanon. Iran will not leave, because Lebanon serves as the perfect training ground and launching point for Hezbollah’s international terrorist campaign.
Lebanon was the first country to fall to Islam in modern times. As commanded by the Koran, the Islamists have now put the rest of the world in their sights. The destruction of Lebanese democracy and subjugation of Lebanese Christians was not merely a strategic victory in Islam’s jihad to rule the world. Along with the Iranian hostage crisis of 1979-80, it was an inspiration. The jihadists were encouraged by the West’s ineffectual policies and pathetic responses to provocations and confrontations manufactured by the Islamists. During the Iranian hostage crisis, while Jimmy Carter alternately groveled and bungled, Ayatollah Khomeini exultingly proclaimed, “America cannot do a damn thing!” This became a slogan and a battle cry throughout the Middle East.1
When Iran’s vicious puppet Hezbollah blew up the marines in Lebanon in 1983, America turned tail and ran, leaving the Christians to be slaughtered in town after town. It sent a strong, loud, and clear message to the Muslim radicals of the world, including Osama bin Laden: America is no longer the power it used to be.
After taking over Lebanon Arab Muslims turned their attention to countries outside of the Middle East. In their quest for world domination Muslims organized, grew stronger, and planned one attack after the other. As a result of the humiliation of America and the conquest of Lebanon, the flames of jihad now rage all over the world. Here are only a few examples.
Sudan
In April 1983, shortly after the United States fled from Beirut, the Arab Muslim government in Khartoum, Sudan, began a jihad to impose Islam on black African Christians and animists in the southern part of the country. The southerners' resistance to the imposition of Islam led to civil war, which the Khartoum government turned into a war of genocide and slavery.2 Estimates of the death toll run as high as 2 million, one of the highest civilian death tolls since the Second World War. That’s more people killed than in Rwanda, Liberia, the Ivory Coast, Kosovo, and Bosnia combined.3 The Khartoum government used the profits from the slave trade to subsidize its war of genocide against the people of southern Sudan.4 At the same time, Sudan became a haven for al Qaeda jihadists and a hub for international terrorist operations.5In addition, Since early 2003, the Khartoum government has been waging war against black African Muslims in the western Sudanese region of Darfur.6 In its war against Darfur, systematic rape has joined starvation and mass murder in Sudan’s repertoire of jihad terror tactics.7 According to a United Nations estimate, more than 180,000 people died between October 2003 and March 2005; an average of 10,000 people have died per month,8 and another 2 million have been driven from their homes.9
Unlike the world’s apathetic response to more than twenty years of genocide in southern Sudan, the Darfur crisis has attracted worldwide media coverage and scrutiny by the United Nations Security Council. No doubt the sudden glare of publicity and Security Council scrutiny led to the realization in Khartoum that it could not wage two wars of genocide simultaneously, and this is why it agreed to a “peace deal” in the south, which was “finalized” in January 2005.10Kharoum’s “restraint” in southern Sudan is nothing more than a hudna, a temporary cease-fire, which will last only as long as Sudan is under international pressure for its depredations in Darfur. The Arab League and Egypt have already announced their support for the Khartoum government, and have led efforts to prevent the imposition of sanctions.
Nigeria
In 1999, Muslim-dominated governments in twelve of Nigeria’s thirty-six states began implementing Sharia, Islamic law, even though this violated the federal constitution of Nigeria. Under Nigerian Sharia, forbidden practices include building churches (or any other non-Muslim places of worship), playing music, women wearing pants, and riding in taxis with members of the opposite sex. Islamic punishments, such as flogging, stoning, and chopping off hands, are enforced by mobs of Muslim vigilantes.11 In at least one state, all existing Christian churches were destroyed by government order.12 In other states, hundreds of churches have been burned. At least ten thousand people have been killed in violence related to the imposition of Sharia.13
Indonesia
Most people are familiar with the more spectacular terror attacks that have been perpetrated in Indonesia, the world’s most populous Muslim country. These include the October 12, 2002, nightclub bombings in Bali, which killed 202, mostly Australian tourists; the September 9, 2004, bombing of the Australian embassy in Jakarta, which killed 11; and the October 1, 2005, restaurant bombings, again in Bali, which killed 22.14 In addition to attacking foreign tourists and targets inside the country, Islamists have been conducting a terror campaign against Indonesia’s Christian minority, and have been seeking to impose Sharia law. Since 1999, over 19,000 have been killed in clashes between Muslims and Christians, and over 600,000 have been made homeless.15 The Islamic terror campaign in Indonesia has included the trademark bombings, beheadings, and church burnings. On Christmas Eve, 2000, eleven churches across Indonesia were bombed simultaneously by an al Qaeda affiliate; 19 people were killed and approximately 100 were wounded.16 On December 31, 2005, a bomb exploded in a Christian market in Palu, Sulawesi, as shoppers prepared for New Year’s Eve. Eight were killed and 45 were wounded.17
South Asia: Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, and Thailand
Pakistan and Bangladesh have emerged as the major centers of Islamic terrorism in Asia. Jihadists trained in terrorist camps in both countries commit atrocities inside Pakistan and Bangladesh as well as in neighboring countries, particularly India and Thailand.18 On August 17, 2005, there were five hundred synchronized terror bombings across Bangladesh.19 Also in Bangladesh,
members of minority religions have suffered from ghastly violence, including collective terror. The Nation reports that some Buddhists and Christians were blinded, had fingers cut off or had hands amputated, while “others had iron rods nailed through their legs or abdomen.” Women and children have “been gang-raped, often in front of their fathers or husbands.” In addition, hundreds of temples were desecrated and statues destroyed; thousands of homes and businesses looted or burned. . . . As for Hindus, the human rights organization Freedom House reports they have been subject to “rape, torture and killing and the destruction of their cultural and religious identity at the hands of Muslims. “20
Since 2002, there have been at least seven terrorist bombing and shooting attacks inside Pakistan (not counting assassination attempts on government officials).21 Pakistani schoolbooks state that Hindus are “backward, superstitious wife burners, and that they are inherently cruel and if given the chance would assert their power over the weak, especially Muslims, by depriving them of education and pouring molten lead into their ears."22
Muslims account for only 9 percent of the population of
Thailand.23 Between January 2004 and October 2005, at least 1,100 people have been killed in a series of Islamic terrorist attacks.24 Muslim terrorist atrocities include bombings (including numerous simultaneous bombings), beheadings, and the burning of Buddhist monasteries.25India has also been the scene of numerous Islamic terror beheadings and bombings.26
In the last twenty-some years, while Americans were trying to understand how to reason with the Middle East, Islam has reinvigorated its export of fundamentalism. Our ignorance and complacency have been the radical islamists' ally. Their first major attack on America was the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. To show how far out in left field we were, the government handled it as a crime, not as an act of terrorism. Twenty years after a Hezbollah terrorist suicide bomber detonated a truck bomb at the marine barracks in Beirut, the perpetrators who drove the Ryder truck bomb under the World Trade Center were treated as regular everyday criminals. Later that year, in June, nine followers of Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman of Egypt and the sheikh himself were arrested for planning a day of terror in New York City. They planned to bomb the United Nations headquarters, the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, the George Washington Bridge, and a federal office building.
After months of investigation by our government, days of reviewing documents, and many hours of court exhibits and interviews, we found out that the conspirators had come and worked together from five different terrorist groups, including the Egyptian al Gamaat al Islamiya (Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman of Egypt); Sudan’s National Islamic Front (members of the Sudanese mission in New York and five Sudanese were arrested for the second series of bomb plots in Manhattan); Hamas (Mohammed Saleh, owner of a Yonkers, New York, gas station, who was to supply the fuel for the second WTC-connected bombing plot and who was also a pivotal Hamas figure in arranging for Hamas military training in Sudan and for acquiring military equipment for Hamas forces in Jordan); Islamic Jihad; and al Fuqra (a militant black Pakistani organization with adherents in Colorado, New York, Canada, and Pakistan). This discovery showed the authorities a network of terrorist organizations woven into the fabric of American society.27
America never seems to learn the danger of letting your enemy think that you are weak, asleep, or careless. America sent message after message to the Islamists that while America possesses the most superior weapons of war, it does not possess the resolve or the will to follow through till victory. America proved it when it withdrew from Lebanon after the barracks were bombed and after it didn’t finish the job in Iraq the first time around during the Gulf War. Ever since that signal was sent, the Islamists ratcheted up their attacks, and the United States slept through every attack on its bases and interests overseas. They hijacked TWA flight 847 and the cruise ship Achille Lauro in 1985. They bombed another TWA flight and hijacked Pan Am flight 73 in 1986. They bombed Pan Am flight 103 in 1988. They bombed a military compound in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in 1995. The Khobar Towers, also in Saudi Arabia, were bombed 1996. They also bombed the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000. So what signal did the United States send to the Islamic terrorists during eight years of the Clinton administration? During those years the U.S. defense budget was depleted and the U.S. government was a social development center of political correctness, political corruption, and arrogance while the Chinese stole our military secrets. The United States was in the middle of a slumber party while the Islamists were organizing, training, recruiting, and infiltrating our country and counting on our blindness, carelessness, and ignorance. They knew that the leadership was busy lying and covering up sexual scandals instead of building our military, building our intelligence, increasing America’s defense, and staying on the lookout for anyone wishing our country harm.
What was our response after the Muslim terrorists bombed the World Trade Center in February 1993, killing six people and injuring hundreds? Nothing. The outcome of our government’s investigations should have rung like a morning alarm resonating in every government and military office in our country to wake up and fight against worldwide Islamic jihadist terrorism. Al Qaeda-trained Islamic fighters brought down two U.S. helicopters in October 1993 in Somalia, killing eighteen U.S. rangers. What did we do? Nothing.
What was our response when Muslims exploded a truck bomb in June 1996 in the air force’s Khobar Towers housing complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, injuring more than 500? Nothing. What was our response when Islamists exploded a truck bomb in August 1998, destroying the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, leaving 234 dead, including 12 Americans, and injuring more than 5,000? Nothing.
What was our response when the same Islamic fanatics bombed the USS Cole in October 2000, blasting a hole in it as the ship took on fuel in Aden, Yemen, killing 17 sailors and wounding 39? Nothing.28
In a shameful effort to demonstrate strength, President Clinton launched some guided missiles onto a deserted terrorist camp in the desert, hoping that the headline would replace his sexual escapade with Monica Lewinsky in the front pages of America’s newspapers.
Our antimilitary attitude as a nation and our cowardly responses to terrorists empowered our enemy to strengthen, grow, acquire weapons, recruit scientists, and place Islamic terrorists right here in our midst, learning flight lessons, to begin our destruction. Finally on September 11, 2001, they tried again and successfully attacked America. Do you have any doubt that if Osama bin Laden had had a nuclear bomb, he would have used it instead of airplanes?
Terrorist networks have set up shop in America. They took their time watching our reaction, learning our weaknesses, learning how to use our political system, and studying our immigration system and how it works. America has focused on al Qaeda only as the most threatening group du jour and America’s number-one enemy. This is a grave mistake. Al Qaeda is nothing more than a melting pot of Islamists from different countries and various Islamic militant groups that share an ideology and a hatred for the West. Intelligence reports show evidence that Hamas, the terrorist organization that most Americans believe is Israel’s problem, and Hezbollah, that most Americans believe is a Lebanese problem, have both established cells in the United States and networks with al Qaeda to perpetrate suicide bombings in American cities.29 The Muslim Brotherhood is also active in the United States.30
America’s problems with terrorist infiltration stem from its long, porous borders with Canada and Mexico. Our Canadian border stretches more than four thousand miles, while the Mexican one is about two thousand miles long. Almost half these borders are in unpopulated areas and are not patrolled. Thousands of terrorists can get in undetected. The Mexican border poses the most dangerous threat. Non-Mexicans—called the politically correct OTMs (other than Mexicans) so that we do not call them for who they are, Muslim Arabs— are being sneaked into our country by the notorious Mexican MS 13 gang. It is estimated that thousands of sleeper agents have been smuggled into the country illegally through the Mexican border alone.31Many sources within the FBI believe that these terrorists are here in America raising funds and working on logistics, waiting for the opportunity to strike within the United States. Many of them have received training in Lebanon, Syria, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.
The majority of these terror cells are made up of Muslim immigrants from Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and other Middle Eastern Muslim countries, people have families, relatives, or friends residing in the United States and came in the country legally. However, some of these cells include members who are U.S.-born American Muslim citizens. They are strongly established in Muslim communities, working and running small businesses under the radar, and having meetings, recruiting sympathizers, and offering videos, Arabic magazines, and other publications that encourage hatred of anything Western and glamorize jihad fe samil el lah, jihad for Allah. They are also able to raise funds for their cause under the cover of Islamic charities and foundations.32
Using our Laws, Bill of Rights, Constitution,
and Fair-mindedness to Plot Our Destruction
International terrorist organization
s of all sorts have set up shop in America,33 and they are taking advantage of religious, civic, and charitable organizations, using our laws for their protection. They are fooling the American public by appearing to be charitable and human rights organizations. After September 11, 2001, the U.S. government shut down a few of these charities with links to terrorism, such as the Holy Land Foundation. Our politically correct law enforcement officials and especially naive, ignorant leaders of religious or educational institutions, who want to believe the best about everyone and not judge anyone, are more than willing to encourage and sponsor groups such as the Council for American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in the name of multiculturalism and diversity. We are facing total destruction at the hands of an enemy that is absolutely committed to killing the Great Satan America.
These American-based terrorists have been able to use such Islamic charities and front small businesses to send equipment to terrorist groups in the Middle East, to offer financial rewards to the families of suicide bombers, and to coordinate efforts with other terrorist networks around the world to attack American interests abroad while preparing for the right time to strike here in the homeland.
According to Philadelphia-based terrorism scholar Daniel Pipes writing in the New York Post, fifteen warrants were executed in March 2002. In Ann Arbor, Michigan, Rabih Haddad was accused of funneling money to terrorists via the Global Relief Foundation in December 2001 (he was later deported); in justice, Illinois, Enaam Arnaout, executive director of the Benevolence International Foundation, was accused of tunneling money to al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations (April 2002); in New York, Mohammed Yousry, Ahmed Abdel Sattar, and Yassir al-Sirri have been accused of passing messages between Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman (serving a life sentence for his part in an attempt to blow up New York City landmarks) and his followers (April 2002); in Chicago, Jose Padilla was accused of being an al Qaeda member who was plotting to release a dirty bomb in a U.S. city in May 2002 (he pled guilty to a racketeering charge not involving al Qaeda); and in Sunrise, Florida, Adham Hassoun was suspected of organizing al Qaeda operatives in the United States (June 2002) . . . and the list goes on.34
Because They Hate: A Survivor of Islamic Terror Warns America Page 18